


About the Living, For the Dead

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Other, Symbiote Sex, a lot happens here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-28 18:05:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: David can't save Frank, but he can avenge him.





	1. So We Grieve

**Author's Note:**

> I like The Punisher and I like Venom and this is the fusion of the two that no one asked for but I definitely need.

Frank is dying, and there’s nothing in the world David can do to save him.

He watches. He doesn’t look away. He cries and he holds him and he aches – ah, God, does he ache.

“Take him,” Frank breathes, a last request, and how do you deny a man that? How could he refuse Frank anything, after all he’s gone through on David’s behalf. “Take him, save him...”

And David, because he loves this man and because he’s not afraid, not really, of anything that would deign take such care of Frank, promises he will.

The symbiote is more reluctant. It’s burned away to almost nothing, squirming over the worst of Frank’s wounds but unable to expend the energy required to heal him, the way David has seen it do so many times now. He’d thought their relationship something perfect, something untouchable, and watching them lose each other breaks his heart almost as much as him losing Frank.

Madani is not watching. Madani can’t hear Frank’s dying rasps – Madani is taking care of clean up, giving them space because she knows what it’s like to hold someone too late, to take on the responsibility of being the last thing they see.

Everyone thinks Punisher is dead, burned up, and now that Frank is dying – David sobs, broken and bitter – no one will think to question that assumption. And David knows they can use that – they can use that, because Russo got away, and that’s wrong. He can give the symbiote a home, he can save him, and maybe, just maybe, he – _they_ – can finish what Frank started.

Frank’s fingers are clutching his, shaking and seizing, every breath labored and wet. Each exhale sends little flecks of blood flying, and David thinks he might be drowning, suffocating on his own blood. From the looks of it, Rawlins had worked him over expertly before he’d managed to break free and kill him, but the exertion had cost Frank dearly.

Those fingers guide his hand to Frank’s gut, to the squirming, charred surface of the symbiote. David has never dared touch the creature, and is surprised when it flattens against Frank’s skin, spreading thin, away from David’s hand as though shy. Frank presses David’s palm into it. He’s making desperate eye contact with David, dark eyes flicking over David’s as he struggles to stay, but there are no more words. David curls his fingers against the oil-slick darkness, and knows that Punisher and Frank are having one of those conversations David can’t hear but can see. Franks lips move as though he’s trying to speak, but he can’t hear him however close he leans.

_**David** _

He hears it, but he doesn’t. It’s strange, like his thoughts breaking to filter in a new transmission.

_**Hurts David burns hurts dying dying dying please** _

“It’s okay,” he whispers, and sniffs, trying to steady his voice, trying to sound kind and pleasant and welcoming. “Hey. It’s okay, c’mon. That’s what Frank wants, right? C’mon, you scary, beautiful thing.”

_**He will die he will die if I leave** _

“Yeah,” David says, and he can see his tears splash on Frank’s bloodied torso. “He will. We can’t save him. But I can save you. Lemme save you.”

David watches Frank’s face as the symbiote gathers itself and slowly clings around his hand, wrapping up his wrist. There’s not much left of it, and it’s burning hot against his skin, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away from the man who sacrificed himself for David and his family. He can see it, the moment when the symbiote fully abandons Frank’s body; the blood pumps heavier from the wound it was trying to staunch, and Frank’s eyes widen, his bloody lips part. David pets his hair with his free hand, tries to smooth the furrow from his brow.

He doesn’t even feel the symbiote sink into his skin; just a spreading of warmth up his arm, through his veins, suffusing him. Suddenly he is aware that part of him – part of _him_ – is badly injured and needs rest and healing. It’s Punisher, a presence that curls in his mind with deep misery and rage and a sense of heavy self-loathing.

_**We do not mourn the loss of a host** _

Frank’s eyes drift, and glass over, and he heaves a shaking, weak sigh that has no follow up, no reflexive inhale. His body is so warm and so heavy across David’s lap.

_**We mourn a friend a love** _

David doesn’t know if Punisher means ‘we’ in reference to itself or the both of them, but either way its correct.

_**We means us David means you and I** _

Madani comes back. She gently pulls them away from Frank, gently guides them to their feet. It’s so easy, so natural, to think of them as a set, a unit. Punisher is silent in his mind but present, resting, recovering. David feels tired and sick and hollow and he knows only part of that is grief and shock. They have both lost so much so suddenly and it hurts. But together there is a chance they can make it mean something, make the pain into something with meaning.

They can make it more, and they will.

They just have to heal.


	2. Recovery is not Hiding

_**David** _

The voice snaps him out of his fixation, out of the mindless movement of his body as he goes through the motion of setting up the third and final computer of his new array. It’s nothing compared to what he’d created last year in the power station basement, but even if the feds hadn’t dismantled the setup when they’d come in to clean up the mess, David wouldn’t have been able to stay there. Not without Frank.

Not after he’d died in his arms down there.

_**Easier not to think David easier to stay in the present** _

Punisher flooded him with concern, with fondness, with a sense of peace that he himself had lost when Frank had died. They were both still mourning, and it’s a sharp pang through both of them whenever David thinks Frank’s name.

_**Bad David bad brain phenethylamine dopamine norepinephrine all low unhealthy mourning mourning mourning we have to focus** _

David understands that. That’s why he’d let himself go on autopilot for the last – he glances at his watch and curses. Seven hours? They’d been down here for _seven hours_ and he hadn’t finished the array?

He realizes that he’s spent a lot of time down here just… existing. Punisher was still weak, still tired, and David’s depression wasn’t expediting its recovery. Either of their recoveries. He’d done his research long before Punisher had entrusted itself to him; he’d hacked into plenty of research about the symbiotes and poured over it, fascinated. As he understood it, there were chemicals in the human brain that the symbiote required – things it must naturally have gotten on its home planet, or perhaps from what ever it evolved alongside as a host – and without them it suffered.

The human brain suffered without them too, but for the symbiote it wasn’t just depression or unhappiness, it was like starvation. David felt a surge of guilt; he’d promised to take care of the symbiote and here he was wallowing in loss and barely taking care of himself.

_**Hush it’s okay we’re okay we’re just sad don’t be sad about sad that’s worse** _

He chuckles and shakes his head. He can feel a sort of tension across his shoulders, it builds and builds and then all at once lets go, and then – _ahh, there_. The affection he feels for the toothy, inky creature hovering over his shoulder, connected to his flesh by a seamless growth of tentacle, is a rush; it’s immediate and powerful and he’s pleased to hear it chuckle.

“You know, I have a hard time believing Frank was less depressed than I am.” David says, and for once the mention of the dead man doesn’t stab them both – quite the opposite. They see him in their mind and it’s a rush of fondness, of love. They had both loved him. Love was good, and even the memory of it comes with the release of certain endorphins. Punisher hums and lurches toward him, bumping its forehead to his.

“ _ **Frank felt deeply. We adapted. He took care of himself, of us, mindful. Curtis taught him. It was… difficult.**_ ”

It comes in a rush of images and impressions, memories not his own – Frank meditating, Frank focusing on their bond, Frank loving – them, not just Punisher, but _them_ , both of them, and latching on to that love to pull him on and on. The realization that Frank had cared for him as much as he cared for Frank is –

Well.

“ _ **You did not know?**_ ”

David scoffs, shakes his head, looking away. “Of course I didn’t know. Half the time he looked like he wanted to kick the shit out of me and the rest of the time _I_ wanted to kick the shit out of me.”

It had been a lot, and Punisher recognizes this, soothes him with a thought. It feels like calm sweeping over his brain, but it’s not his calm – it’s the arrogant, self-assured nature of his symbiote, pressing into him, overwhelming his own doubts and concerns. Punisher _knows_ what Frank felt because it had felt those things with him. It is impossible to doubt in the face of that knowledge, and David feels himself practically _glow_.

Then comes the regret. So much love for each other, unaddressed, unmentioned. Ignored. David, wrapped up in his doubts and his conflict over the love he felt for his wife and the love he felt for Frank, in the jealousy sparked over Sarah kissing Frank – David was an idiot. He could have given Frank something to live for, rather than a reason to die noble.

“ _ **He chose, David. It wasn’t for any lack of yours. The moment we bonded I knew I would lose him. He belonged to the dead more than he would ever belong to us.**_ ”

David can’t imagine that. He can feel Punisher’s pain – the pain of loving someone and knowing their heart, despite the effort they put into the relationship, wasn’t really in it. The pain of knowing that your love was willing to die, just waiting for the chance really. He’d never really thought of Frank as suicidal, but seeing him through the symbiote’s eyes, he has new perspective. Frank dreamed of death, courted it, counted on it.

He loved so many things, so deeply, but his losses had been too great. Finding out that the work he’d done in Cerberus had been illegitimate, had made him a murderer of who knew how many innocent men had been the end of him. He didn’t believe in redemption, certainly not for himself. He’d loved David, loved Punisher – he’d loved Sarah and the kids too, David felt that in the memories Punisher shared – but he had hated himself.

“I’m sorry,” he says, lifting his hand to run his fingers over the face bobbing before him the way he can feel Punisher wants him to. The symbiote is surprisingly tactile, likes touching and being touched as a form of affection, and David is all for it. After better than a year of living in isolation with most forms of contact coming with pain, it was nice to be able to trust in physicality that wouldn’t hurt.

“ _ **Do not be. He was what he was and we loved him. His pain does not change that. Now it is time to go upstairs.**_ ”

David groans and looks at the half-finished work station, the computers gutted and waiting for him to put back together. There was work down here they needed to do –

“ _ **Sarah is worried about us. Leo and Zach wonder as well why you hide from them. Can you not see that, David?**_ _ **We need to rest. We are recovering. If we are to succeed in this plan of ours, you must rest.**_ ”

“Look, Russo is out there, right now – that smug piece of shit thinks he got away and –”

“ _ **And he is hiding. Like a rat, like a roach. When we find him, we will eat his pretty face off his skull and he will die screaming, begging our mercy and there will be none. It will be delicious and we live for that moment. But that is future. This is now. Go up stairs. This… moping… is unbecoming.**_ ”

David sighs, but his feet are already carrying him toward the stairs. Punisher sinks back beneath his skin, disappearing, spreading warm and content in his chest.

_**We are hungry also David it is past time to eat** _

David snorts and shakes his head, moving out of the basement to the kitchen to make them a sandwich.


	3. A Light That's Sweet

The year David spent living in a basement, all alone, talking to himself, watching his family through a fucking camera system he’d had to creep into his own house to install and riffling through various government agencies files to try and figure out how to bring himself back to life – that year had only been survived because David was _not_ an impulsive man.

His ability to rationalize, to slow down and process and reason, this had saved his life many times. It had only been after meeting Frank – and then Punisher – that he’d started to slip. Seeing them interact with his family, the jealousy, the hurt… there are nightmares, sometimes, things he tries to hide even from his other. Nightmares where Frank takes them away, nightmares where Frank kills him to have them, nightmares where he’s still in that basement and his family doesn’t even miss him.

Punisher knows these nightmares. It doesn’t exactly understand them – they are fears, it supposes, but they are irrational. It has shown David again and again that Frank loved him, loved his family, and that he was part of that family; it was a web and Frank had loved the whole construct, but David in particular. Frank would never have stolen from him, never have put himself between the good that David had waiting. Frank, after all, had only gone on living to ensure that David could go back to his family after they’d killed the men responsible for destroying his.

So when David twists and writhes in bed, Punisher tastes his anguish, his despair, and wakes him before he can wake Sarah. It soothes him into rising without a noise, but drags him from the dream swiftly, baring it from further examination. This is easy for the symbiote, sort of like throwing the thought in a box. It’s not David’s thought, it’s _theirs_ , and if they have to share it, then Punisher will deal with it.

_**Lets go to the basement get up lets go** _

David swings his legs out of the bed even as he protests mentally – it’s two thirty in the morning, they need to sleep.

_**Need to show you something something we don’t want Sarah to see come on basement lets go** _

It does not insist, lets David make up his own mind. It would be a waste of both their energy for it to take control and wrestle with David’s uncertainty, and David is a curious creature by nature. Possibly the most curious, mentally-inclined host Punisher has ever had. They balance each other well; Punisher had always tended toward baser impulses, a habit that had made Frank a very good host as far as getting along went, but not so good in terms of keeping each other safe.

The basement is cold, startlingly so, and that gets David more awake. The computers are running – they’re always running, always ready for him to tune back in – but they don’t contribute much to the heating of the large, otherwise empty room.

Well, not totally empty. There’s an old futon and a broken mini-fridge David won’t admit needs to be thrown out for some reason. Hoarder tendencies, probably. Punisher pushes the image of the futon on him when he starts futzing around at the main terminal, and he sighs but obediently moves to sit.

“Okay, so shoot. What was so important –”

He’s cut off by the image, definitely not his own, of himself, sitting at the desk in the power station. He looks tired, and distant, not focused on anything in particular, just looking off to one side, gently lit in the low lights but somehow distinct. His hair is wild, longer, tangled around his face in a mess that somehow reads as endearing; his eyes – they’re not even focused on them, but they’re so blue its unnatural. And in this image – it’s a memory, but it’s not, it’s something more, enhanced by so many emotions that Punisher is pushing through their bond

_**protect beware infuriating love love love** _

in this image he looks up, straight into his minds eye – _Frank’s_ mind’s eye because who else would he have been talking to there – and he smiles, and his own heart twists with the fondness and delight he feels, emotions high and unnatural for ‘him’ at the time. He feels a distant stirring of arousal, and again it’s not his own, but the pounding of his heart certainly is.

The memory dissipates all at once, leaving him feeling shell-shocked and wide-eyed in the basement dark, and Punisher curls protectively, sweetly, around his ribs. It’s a physical presence; he can _feel_ the symbiote in his chest, winding around bone, caressing his thudding heart. It should be disturbing, but somehow it’s a comfort.

_**That is how he saw you how he thought of you never wanted to take them from you never wanted to hurt you not really** _

David nods mutely, and Punisher manifests from his chest, facing him, its opalescent eyes locked with him.

“ _ **He thought you beautiful, David. He thought you good. It is a disservice to hold these fears you know to be groundless.**_ ”

“It’s not – I _know_ they’re wrong. It’s…”

“ _ **These dreams have been more persistent since you realized Frank loved you. They are a detriment to your mental health. Stop having them.**_ ”

“I can’t just _stop_ myself from having dreams, dude, it doesn’t – you _know_ it doesn’t work like that!”

The symbiote is in his face now, radiating anger, defensiveness. “ _ **He loved you and you repay that love dreaming of him taking everything he wanted you to have away.**_ ”

His heart clenches and he frowns, furious at the implication. He’s never, in the time they’ve been together – over a month now – been angry at the symbiote, not sensed any anger from it at him, but now? Oh, now they’re both mad.

Anger, sometimes, drags the truth out better. He’ll think about that later, after, and wonder if Punisher hadn’t been deliberately pushing. In the moment though, he has to fight to keep his voice down, railing at the symbiote and fighting not to cry.

“Maybe he deserved them more than me, okay? Maybe that’s what it’s about, maybe I’m not scared of him – why the _fuck_ would I be scared of him? I loved him so much I would have _died_ for him and now he’s _gone_ and he _shouldn’t be_ , he should be _here_ – Sarah would be happier with him, someone strong and steady, not some _loser_ who hid from her for a year!”

Those white eyes are wide in shock, though they are mentally entwined and David thinks it _had_ to have known… but then, he hadn’t known Punisher was angry about his nightmares until it spoke, either.

“ _ **Everything he did he did for your survival. For**_ **you,** _ **David**._ ”

“Yeah, so you say! Maybe you’re just fucking with me, trying to make me happy – gotta make those brain chemicals, right? Make it comfy in here for you, _right?_ ”

He regrets saying it even as he says it, his own eyes widening at the surge of hurt and upset he feels wash through him, followed by a coiled sort of anger. All at once he’s slammed back into the futon, and he can’t move; Punisher looms in front of him, dangerous teeth on gruesome display. For all that it always seems to be grinning, there’s nothing amused about it’s visage now.

He expects an argument. He expects to be lectured. To be called out for implying that Punisher would lie – because he can feel it now, feel all that stirring in the symbiote.

Instead he’s hit with another mental image. This one, he assumes, is Punisher’s own perspective – watching Frank. Aware of Frank, feeling what Frank feels, this burning in his core, tension in his abs that’s familiar but – “oh god” – not his own, except right this moment it might as well be. Frank’s eyes are shut, his lips parted, his hand wrapped firm around his cock, stroking in quick, easy motions. David feels enraptured but intrusive, like a voyeur in his own head, unable to block out the vision, and he wants to scream at Punisher – you don’t just _show_ someone that, and what does that have to do with what they were talking about anyway? – when Frank _moans_ , soft but clear. “David,” he says, and David doesn’t think he’ll ever be this hard this fast ever again.

“ _ **What was that he said?**_ ”

Again, like an instant replay, Frank’s eyelids fluttering, his back pressed against the cold tiles of the shower they’d used in that hellish basement, his hand squeezing just slightly as he moans David’s name.

“ _ **Ah, that’s right. You, he was thinking about you.**_ ”

The words are so smug yet so bitter – Punisher proving a point.

David wants to protest, tell the symbiote to knock it off, but he’s hit with another memory. Still Frank, still jerking himself, this time slow and leisurely, laying on his back in the camp bed he’d claimed as his own last year. His eyes are open and he’s watching David, sleeping upright in the chair across from him. Through Punisher, David can feel his apprehension, worried David will wake up but kind of hoping he does. It’s a side of Frank David never dared imagine, and he feels Punisher coiled in Frank’s stomach and chest, feeding on the endorphins, feeding on the arousal, and he can _see Frank’s thoughts_ , sees himself on his knees, looking up at Frank half-lidded and sultry, taking his cock in his mouth, he sees himself bathed in light as he rides Frank, he sees himself fucking Frank. These are not real things, he knows that, but they’re heady and hazy and _powerful_ things, and David hears himself moan, low and long.

“ _ **Touch yourself.**_ ”

He wants to resist, wants to deny that he wants to, wants to tell Punisher that there is a difference between love and lust and that what he’s being shown here is just lust, nothing more, just blind, stupid lust from a man who had been alone too long, but he can’t. With their bond kicked wide open like it is, there’s no lying to each other. He can feel the love, the fondness, intermingled with the desire and the want, and he knows Punisher can feel his own arousal, his own powerful need.

Frank could have gone after anyone. That Karen woman, hell, he could have been thinking about Sarah and it would have been more understandable, but he wasn’t. He was thinking about David, he wanted _David_ , yearned for him, and David – oh, David was _lost_ in that revelation.

“ _ **You think I was was lying? Manipulating you?**_ ”

It’s accusatory, mocking, but David knows he deserves it. Punisher would not, maybe _could not_ have lied, he understands that now. But still he can’t move, can only shiver when the symbiote makes a soft sound, a click of the tongue maybe, and then his legs slowly part. He has no control over it, but he makes no effort to stop it, nor does he stop his hands when they move to shimmy down his pajama pants. His breath hitches and Punisher shushes him, nuzzling against his cheek.

“ _ **He wanted you. Loved you. Wanted you happy, David. So let’s be happy.**_ ”

Shiny black pours forth over his arm, coating his hand before wrapping around his cock; he hisses through his teeth and Punisher lavs its tongue over his cheek. He leans back into the futon, cocking his hips forward, and he doesn’t know if it’s him doing it or the symbiote. All the while, his mind is filled with images of Frank, Frank smiling, Frank licking his lips, biting them, Frank jerking off, fingering himself, letting Punisher take him, imagining it was David –

“ _ **Oh, yes. You like that idea? Which part, David? You fucking Frank?**_ ” He feels something spreading him open, pushing beneath his balls, slick and wet and firm. “ _ **Or me fucking you?**_ ”

It’s filthy and impossible and perfect, his hand moving languid and too loose on his dick and the tentacle – because, call a spade a spade, that’s definitely what it is sliding against his ass, into him – filling him up exactly right. David hasn’t been fucked since college, hasn’t even come close to feeling anything like this _ever_ , not with Sarah, not with _anyone_. All he can do is ride it, the fingers of the hand not stroking his cock digging into the fabric of the futon, tensing with the only control he’s allowed. Punisher won’t even allow him to moan, catching the noises in his throat and strangling them so they don’t attract any attention. It’s early but neither of them want to take any risks.

“ _ **Is it good, David?**_ ” Punisher hisses in his ear, tongue curling over the cartilage. “ _ **Tell me what you want.**_ ”

There are no words. He’s opened himself completely to the symbiote, to the point where there is no question anymore of want, no question of whether he’s enjoying himself. He wants more. It’s good. He wants more. God – it’s good, better than anything in life.

All through it, as that tentacle picks up speed and their hand tightens on him, stoking him harder, counterpoint to the tentacle. David only realizes tears are leaking out of him when Punisher hums, leaning in to lick them away. “ _ **No, David, no tears. We are happy like this.**_ ”

The weirdest part of it all is, he _is_ , and it’s not just fuck-happy, it’s genuine, bone-deep, actual joy. He’s getting fucked by an alien that lives inside him, who’s sharing memories of his best friend – which it feels weird to acknowledge that’s all Frank officially could ever be called for him – jacking off to thoughts of them together because his symbiotic alien used to be Frank’s. And he’s happy. Genuinely fucking happy, for the first time in months.

When he comes, the image seared before his eyes, the picture that would make him cry out if it weren’t for the obscenely long, prehensile tongue filling his throat, is of Frank, head cocked back, eyes closed, lower lip all swollen from his own teeth, growling David’s name as he comes into his own fist. Punisher feeds him this image and the sensation of of his own come hitting his stomach is timed with the memory of Frank coming, like they’re hitting that release together, and it should be miserable, a reminder of what he’ll never have, but it’s not.

God, it’s not.

It’s perfect, and Punisher purrs as it sinks back under his skin, curling in its usual place around his rips as he tries to get his breath back, tries to make his legs stop shaking.

_**You have me I have him all of him in me so you have him too** _

David sighs, closing his eyes and shivering as he relaxes on the futon. He has a feeling he’s going to pass out down here, knows he should at least clean himself up before he does so when Sarah comes to find him he’s at least decent.

_**Stop dreaming ugly dreams** _

He nods in weary agreement, thinking that he can’t control what he dreams and knowing in a strange way that there’s no chance he could dream of Frank anymore, not in any light that wasn’t sweet.


End file.
